January has come on like a lion. We had some serious snowfall the past few days. It's melted a bit but there is still lots of the white stuff lying around. I got lots of exercise shoveling.. lol
I finished my first book of 2022 and will provide my review and also the synopsis of the next book in line. I've ordered a few books but they won't arrive for awhile. One came in the mail today and I'll provide the synopsis of it. As well, I'll get back to my 2021 theme, Women Authors Whose Works I've been enjoying.
Just Finished
"Up until now I've enjoyed 4 of English author J.J. Marric's Commander Gideon series. The series is an entertaining police procedural set in London in the '60s. Commander George Gideon is head of London's CID and each story seems to involve a number of ongoing, different cases.
In Gideon's Wrath, the 13th in the series, there are 3 ongoing cases that are keeping Gideon busy; a murder of a man's wife with the husband the main suspect; young girls being persuaded to pose in the nude for a photographer (a number now missing and some found dead); and attacks on churches in London (starting with desecration, building up to bombs)... Besides these issues, Gideon is dealing with personnel changes; who will be his new Deputy, and dealing with his daughters non-acceptance at music school.
It's all very fascinating, and the story, while it revolves around Gideon, also lets his officers play key roles in investigating and resolving cases. We get the stories from the police perspective but also from the victims and even the criminals involved. Everything moves along at a nice, steady clip, tension builds nicely and personalities get involved. It's an enjoyable, entertaining series of crime stories and makes me even more enthused to continue with the series. (4 stars)"
Currently Reading
"Meet the smart, sexy — supernatural — women of the otherworld. This is not your mother’s coven...
Kelley
Armstrong returns with the eagerly awaited follow-up to Dime Store
Magic. Paige Winterbourne, a headstrong young woman haunted by a dark
legacy, is now put to the ultimate test as she fights to save innocents
from the most insidious evil of all.. . .
In the aftermath of
her mother’s murder, Paige broke with the elite, ultraconservative
American Coven of Witches. Now her goal is to start a new Coven for a
new generation. But while Paige pitches her vision to uptight
thirty-something witches in business suits, a more urgent matter
commands her attention.
Someone is murdering the teenage
offspring of the underworld’s most influential Cabals — a circle of
families that makes the mob look like amateurs. And none is more
powerful than the Cortez Cabal, a faction Paige is intimately acquainted
with. Lucas Cortez, the rebel son and unwilling heir, is none other
than her boyfriend. But love isn’t blind, and Paige has her eyes wide
open as she is drawn into a hunt for an unnatural-born killer. Pitted
against shamans, demons, and goons, it’s a battle chilling enough to
make a wild young woman grow up in a hurry. If she gets the chance."
New Books
"At first he thought it was all part of some crazy nightmare. But it wasn't.
Russell Grahame, MP was only one of a handful of passengers flying peacefully in the sky, the next lying in an un-Earthly green coffin.
Grahame was the first to emerge from this strange resting place. But for him, as well as for the others, it had been only the first ecliptical experience. Soon all were to find themselves lost in a bizarre world of Medieval knights, Stone Age warriors, and gremlins, caught unalterably in the weirdest cocoon of Time."
Women Authors I'm Enjoying - Kerry Greenwood
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| Kerry Greenwood |
"Phryne Fisher is bored. So when she is asked to investigate some strange goings-on in Farrell's Circus and Wild Beast Show, her curiosity gets the better of her. Stripped of her identity, wealth and privilege, Phryne takes a job as a trick-horse-rider, wearing hand-me-downs and a new name. But what connects the circus with the particularly nasty murder in Mrs Witherspoon's house for paying gentlefolk? Or with the warfare between rival gangs on Brunswick Street? Piecing together fragments from the seedy underworld of twenties Fitzroy and the eccentric life under the big top, Phryne proves her mettle yet again, aided only by her wits, an oddly attractive clown, and a stout and helpful bear."
"No one has less interest
in mysteries than Corinna Chapman, who has bread to bake, but they seem
to be arising spontaneously in the vicinity of her bakery, Earthly
Delights. Between the mouthwatering distractions of loaves and muffins,
of Jason her apprentice and Horatio the cat, she's keeping an eye on the
door as she waits for the exciting Daniel, her recently acquired lover,
to walk back into her life.
After a week of no communication
Daniel finally returns, bruised and battered from a run-in with a
so-called messiah. But disturbing things are also happening close to
home. Juliette Lefebvre, the owner of Heavenly Pleasures and maker of
the most gorgeous chocolates in town, is distraught. Someone is spiking
her very expensive chocolates. Is it an elaborate and horrible joke, or
is it a warning that worse may yet happen?"
"Phryne Fisher is doing
one of her favorite things --dancing at the Green Mill (Melbourne's
premier dance hall) to the music of Tintagel Stone's Jazzmakers, the
band who taught St Vitus how to dance. And she's wearing a sparkling
lobelia-coloured georgette dress. Nothing can flap the unflappable
Phryne--especially on a dance floor with so many delectable partners.
Nothing except death, that is.
The dance competition is trailing into
its last hours when suddenly, in the middle of "Bye Bye Blackbird" a
figure slumps to the ground. No shot was heard. Phryne, conscious of how
narrowly the missile missed her own bare shoulder, back, and dress,
investigates.
This leads her into the dark smoky jazz clubs of Fitzroy, into the arms of eloquent strangers, and finally into the the sky, as she follows a complicated family tragedy of the great War and the damaged men who came back from ANZAC cove.
Phryne flies her Gypsy Moth Rigel into the Australian Alps, where she meets a hermit with a dog called Lucky and a wombat living under his bunk....and risks her life on the love between brothers."
"The Hon. Phryne Fisher, languid and slightly bored at the start of 1929, is engaged to find out if the antique-shop son of a Pre-Raphaelite model has died by homicide or suicide. He has some strange friends - a Balkan adventuress, a dilettante with a penchant for antiquities, a Classics professor, a medium and a mysterious supplier who arrives after dark on a motorbike. At the same time she is asked to discover the fate of the lost illegitimate child of a rich old lady, to the evident dislike of the remaining relatives.
With the help of her sister Beth, the cab drivers Bert and Cec and even her two adoptive daughters, Phryne follows eerie leads which take her into odd territory, including the conquest of Jerusalem by General Allenby and the Australian Light Horse, kif smokers, spirit guides, pirate treasure maps and ghosts."
In investigating the poisoning of a young man in a bookshop at the Eastern Market, and the wrongful arrest of one Miss Sylvia Lee, Phryne Fisher is plunged into another exciting adventure. Stopping only for a brief, but intensely erotic, dalliance with the beautiful Simon Abrahams Phryne picks her way through the mystery with help from the old faithful - Bert, Cec, Dot and Detective Inspector 'Call Me Jack' Robinson. But ultimately it is her stealth and wit which solve the crime - and all for the price of a song. . . ."
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